A telephone conference call is a means by which multiple participants communicate by calling into a conference “bridge,” which is a system that enables all of the call's participants to hear each other. In the prior art, a conference call is arranged for by obtaining, from the conferencing service that provides the bridge, a telephone number and pass code with which to access the bridge. The bridge telephone number and pass code are distributed ahead of time to all of the participants of the call. At the time that the conference call is scheduled to begin, each participant dials into the bridge by using the telephone number and pass code.
When a person arranges a conference call, that person sends out the details for the conference call (i.e., date, time, bridge telephone number, and pass code) to the identified participants. The arranging person might also send a reminder or two (via email or other means) to the participants ahead of time, to increase the likelihood that most of the participants will call in on time. Alternatively, the arranging person might resort to using a group scheduling application like Outlook or Lotus, to both arrange for the call and to subsequently send the calling information to the participants automatically. These applications run on desktop personal computers and on a limited number of Windows-based mobile devices.
Organizing a conference in this way often costs time to at least some of the participants, as not everyone joins the call on time. For instance, some participants, such as highly-mobile users that use several devices throughout the day, often have difficultly remembering the dial-in information, if they can even remember that a conference call is about to take place. Furthermore, even if all of the participants have the dial-in information handy and are aware that a conference is about to take place, not everyone uses the same time source; consequently, some participants might dial in early, while some might dial in late.
What is needed is a way to improve the coordinating of a conference call, without some of the disadvantages in the prior art.